This invention relates to voice controlled capture devices such as flatbed scanners, hand-held scanners, or digital scanning cameras. Even more particularly, the invention relates to voice macros for control input for voice controlled capture devices such as flatbed scanners, hand-held scanners, or digital scanning cameras.
Voice controlled capture devices hold several advantages over similar non voice controlled capture devices. One advantage is increased user productivity. It is faster to give a voice command to control the capture device than navigating through the capture device user interface with a mouse and browsing through menus to find the proper scanner control command. Another advantage of voice control is that portable capture devices can be made smaller because many of the user input buttons can be eliminated, reducing the physical space required for the capture device.
In some situations, a user may have certain repetitive or frequent tasks to perform that require saying the same group of voice commands. Though giving voice commands is faster than using a traditional mouse navigable or keyboard oriented capture device user interface, it is still not productive or efficient to have to repeat the same set of voice commands each time a particular recurring task needs to be performed.
It is thus apparent that there is a need in the art for an improved method or apparatus which would eliminate the need to repeat the same set of voice commands for a particular recurring task. The present invention meets these and other needs in the art.
It is an aspect of the present invention to utilize voice macros to control the operation of a voice controlled capture device.
It is another aspect of the invention to utilize voice macros to control the operation of a voice controlled capture device in communication with a host computer.
Yet another aspect of the invention is to create voice macros through a macro recorder for a voice controlled capture device.
Still another aspect of the invention is to create voice macros through a capture device user interface in a voice controlled capture device in communication with a host computer.
A further aspect of the invention is to create voice macros by storing the individual voice commands as digital signals in an audio file format within a voice macro command file.
A still further aspect of the invention is to create voice macros by processing each voice command with voice analysis software and storing the command number or command text associated with each voice command within a voice macro command file.
Another aspect of the invention is to output an indication of no match when the voice macro command given by a user does not match any of the stored voice macro commands.
The above and other aspects of the invention are accomplished in a voice controlled capture device that receives voice macros to control its operation. A user identifies a task or tasks that require two or more voice commands to complete. Utilizing a capture device user interface or macro recorder, the user creates a voice macro incorporating the individual voice commands. Each voice command in the set is spoken, captured, and stored in a voice macro command file in memory. A unique voice macro command is pronounced, usually a word or short phrase that has meaning to the user, which is then associated with the voice macro command file containing the set of voice commands. To invoke the voice macro command, the user pronounces the unique voice macro command word or phrase, which is picked up by the capture device through a voice pickup component located in the capture device. Speech recognition software interprets the word or phrase and retrieves the voice macro command file containing the individual voice commands, which are then executed one after the other.
For example, a user may routinely scan documents to capture text and then incorporate the captured text into a new document utilizing a word processor, a typical optical character recognition (OCR) task. In using a voice controlled capture device, several voice commands need to be repeated each time this task is performed, making it ideal for a voice macro command. Using the capture device user interface or macro recorder, the user would speak each of the following voice commands recognized by the voice controlled capture device: xe2x80x9cset color black and whitexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cset dpi 150xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cset sharpening mediumxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cset type textxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cscanxe2x80x9d, and xe2x80x9csend to wordxe2x80x9d. The user next pronounces the word or phrase the user wants to use to invoke the above set of voice commands. In this example, the letters xe2x80x9cOCRxe2x80x9d pronounced by the user would be a good choice for the phrase to use to invoke the voice macro. The set of captured voice commands are associated with the voice macro command phrase xe2x80x9cOCRxe2x80x9d. The next time the user wants to perform this task, all the user has to do is speak the voice macro command phrase xe2x80x9cOCRxe2x80x9d.